ABATTOIR OFFAL.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 179, 31 July 1907, Page 2

ABATTOIR OFFAL.

THE RIGHTS OF THE CORPORA-

TION

A JUDGE'S DECISION

;. Mr Justice Chapman's judgment in the case of William Henderson Young against the Mayor, councillors and citizens of Christchurch, was received at the Supreme Court recently. Mr G. Harper appeared for the plaintiff, and Mr Stringer, K.C., arid Mr Cowlishaw for the defendants. His Honour said that the action,!, nominally for the" conversion of certain-offal of animals slaughtered at the corporation abattoir, was in effect an action brought to try the question whether the butchers who sent their stock to be killed and dressed there had the right to demand re-delivery of the offal. There were really two questions, as the Corporation set up the right to retain the offal in virtue of additional regulations made pursuant to the Slaughtering and Inspection *jsict of 1900. To justify that section 18 of the Act had to be relied on. It authorised only the levying of stallages, rents and tolls, and those tolls were evidently money tolls to be sued for or recovered by distress and levy. There was nothing to justify the making; or enable the recovering of, a toll in kind, though there was nothing to forbid the making of regulations authorising differential charges to be levied according to whether the customer did or did not take away the whole-or any part of the offal and refuse. A statutory power to make regulations for one purpose could not be utilised for a different purpose. Those considerations, however, did not dispose of the real question, which was whether the Corporation had the right in that particular case to sell the offal in advance under a contract to endure for seven years, and to refuse to redeliver such offal to the butchers in "order that it might fulfil the contract. The right of the owners was limited to the removal of not more than 15 per cent, of heads and feet, and the contractor had no right to hides, skin and fat. The plaintiff and the butchers were not parties to the contractor's agreeemnt with the Corporation, but it must be assumed that they knew that it would be im ossible to conduct an abattoir without some such agreement for the removal of offal and refuse, or a staff and appliances to perform the work undertaken by the contractor. Without means of dealing with it the offal was of no more value than so much sewage and filth. It was part of the plaintiff's case that some of the butchers had taken an interest in a company formed for dealing profitably -with offal, and the plaintiff's demand was that his "art of the offal should be delivered to the company. The real position was that the Corporation was burdened with the prospect of having daily to handle an immense quantity of matter that if left on its hands would at once have become sewage and filth. The butchers were neither ready nor willing to remove it in its entirety. It was apparent that an arrangement had to be made, and two years after it was made the master butchers informed the Corporation that they proposed to remove certain by-products from the abattoir. The Corporation was asked to break its contract in order to give the butchers the benefit of being able to deal with profitable offal. It was clear that the Corporation could fulfil its statutory duty only by making such a contract as was quoted, and- everybody connected with the business must have known that. What was now claimed as a property was a property of a peculiar kind, and one with which the Corporation had to deal 'promptly and in globo.' The legal effect was that all the butchers understood that they could not carry on business without ceding to the Corporation the right to sell what was really a burdensome article on suoh terms as could be obtained, and to effect that sale in advance for such terms as should be found necessary. Where the exigencies of the case required the refuse matter to be dealt with on a large scale, and by an arrangement involving the expenditure of large capital and extending over a period, he must hold that when a beast was killed, it wa,s killed subject to an understanding come to prior to the making of the contract, that it was both the right and duty of the^ Corporation to dispose" of the offal in the public interest by means of such a contract. Judgment must be for the defendant Corporation, with costs on the lowest scale.